The Body of Christ with Two Angels Alessandro Alloriearly

The Body of Christ with Two Angels
Alessandro Alloriearly 1590s
From the collection of
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
The inventory of May 24, 1593 records among the effects in the storeroom of the Palazzo Vecchio (Guardaroba Medicea) three copper panels by Alessandro Allori, each measuring 3/4 by 2/3 braccia, representing the dead Christ attended by two angels. Lecchini Giovannoni (1991) associated this note with the present painting and two (unsigned) others (in the Seminario Patriarcale, Venice, and sold Sotheby's, New York, January 22, 2004, lot 17, respectively), which are identical in size and composition. While the Medicean provenance of any of the surviving paintings can not be positively proven, the identification certainly seems very likely: not only do the measurements correspond closely (a Florentine braccio being equivalent to 58.4 cm), but stylistic characteristics also suggest a dating to the early 1590s. A reason for the rather odd fact that three, virtually identical versions of the same composition were kept in the same collection at the same time is hard to find, but the proposal of Alessandro Cecchi that they may have been intended as diplomatic gifts sounds convincing. The suggestion is supported by the fact that by 1596 only one of the coppers remained in the Medici palace.
Vilmos Tátrai has pointed out that Allori's painting, in subject as well as composition, derives from the Byzantine type of the icon of Christ's death, the 'Epitaphios', which represents the corpse of Christ laid out in readiness for the unction, with two angels performing the rites of death. In this context the mattress, upholstered in red velvet, stands for the "red stone", that is, the holy Stone of Unction venerated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: according to tradition, Christ's body was anointed lying on this red marble slab. The icon of the dead Christ laid on the Stone of Unction alludes to the Eucharist, too: the transubstantiation of Christ's flesh and blood into consecrated bread and wine over the altar. The connotation is reinforced here by the communion table in the background, with pyxes and a chalice atop.
It is very rare for a late-sixteenth-century Florentine painting to follow a Byzantine iconography. It might be related to the very close relations between the Florentine and the Spanish courts in those days. The King of Spain, being the most devoted champion of the Catholic Counter-Reformation movement, also bore the title of the king of Jerusalem, and in this role he keenly promoted a major redecoration of the chapel of the Stone of Unction. It may worth noting that Allori himself was also involved in this project, painting an image of the resurrected Christ with two angels for the chapel.

Text: © Axel Vécsey
Details
Title: The Body of Christ with Two Angels
Creator: Alessandro Allori
Physical Dimensions: 45 x 39 cm
Type: paintings
Publisher: Museum of Fine Arts Budapest
Rights: http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/rights_and_reproductions
External Link: http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/adatlap_eng/9763
Medium: oil on copper
Inventory Number: 166

Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Budapest, Hungary

The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, which houses one of the most important collections of European art from Antiquity to the present day, celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of its opening in 2006. The museum has been the centre of ever increasing attention in recent years.

Its seasonal exhibitions, renewed permanent exhibitions and the Museum+ (long night) programmes have attracted five to eight hundred thousand visitors, which is many times that of any other previous period.
A new generation has discovered the newly found joy of being able to appreciate and become well acquainted with works of art. With its exterior fully renovated and its interior undergoing constant change, the museum building is filled with visitors who embark upon the experience for the first time and those who faithfully return to the art institution. People not only come to see seasonal exhibitions organised from the Museum of Fine Arts own collections and works borrowed from abroad but are also increasingly attracted to the permanent collections too.
The various collections - Egyptian Collection, Classical Antiquities, Old Masters' Gallery, Old Sculptures Collection, Prints and Drawings, and the Collection of Art after 1800 - display to visitors a series of world-famous works of art by Leonardo, Raphael, DeBCrer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, El Greco, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Schiele, Kokoschka, Abakanowicz, Kabakov.

Alessandro Allori
May 3, 1535 - Sep 22, 1607

Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori was an Italian portrait painter of the late Mannerist Florentine school.
In 1540, after the death of his father, he was brought up and trained in art by a close friend, often referred to as his 'uncle', the mannerist painter Agnolo Bronzino, whose name he sometimes assumed in his pictures. In some ways, Allori is the last of the line of prominent Florentine painters, of generally undiluted Tuscan artistic heritage: Andrea del Sarto worked with Fra Bartolomeo, Pontormo briefly worked under Andrea, and trained Bronzino, who trained Allori. Subsequent generations in the city would be strongly influenced by the tide of Baroque styles pre-eminent in other parts of Italy.
Freedberg derides Allori as derivative, claiming he illustrates "the ideal of Maniera by which art are generated out of pre-existing art." The polish of figures has an unnatural marble-like form as if he aimed for cold statuary.
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